A man who died at Huntington Hospital earlier this week of the coronavirus was a combat veteran of World War II, his family said Wednesday.
Some members of the George Possas family are also sick, testing positive for the virus, and quarantined, his daughter Denise Bocchicchio said, with one of her sisters in the intensive care unit of Huntington Hospital.
Possas, 93, of East Northport was the son of Greek immigrants. Born in 1926, he grew up in the midst of the Great Depression in Corona, Queens before enlisting in the army at age 17. He fought on several islands in the South Pacific, including the Battle of Hollandia in New Guinea. He was deployed on a ship that was headed for Hiroshima, Japan as part of the plan for a massive invasion of the islands when the US dropped the atomic bomb and brought the war to an end. He served in Japan before discharge in 1946.
Returning home, he became an electrician and eventually owned his own electrical contracting business, which operates with three generations of his family.
He married Evelyn Lambrinon in 1953, and they had four children and nine grandchildren before she died in 2016; they were married for 64 years. Active in the Greek-American community and church, he was awarded the 2017 Greatest Generation Award by the Washington Oxi Day Foundation.